1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a roasting and glazing apparatus and, more particularly, to a machine/device that roasts and/or glazes nuts and other food items that has various novel and advantageous features directed to both safety and performance.
2. Description of the Related Art
Roasted and/or glazed nuts can be made in a variety of manners and using a variety of types of equipment. Available equipment, however, is either cumbersome to use or unsafe in various respects, or both. For instance, it may be difficult and/or unsafe to empty the finished product from a very large, typically heavy cooking bowl into a tray or other bowl for subsequent handling. In particular, a heavy bowl may require two people to safely lift and then be turned to empty its contents. In some machines, the bowl can be lifted by raising a handle, but the bowl can quickly drop if the user accidentally lets go of the handle.
As another example, the addition of water during a nut glazing step often results in the creation of a large burst of steam that may burn the operator if appropriate precautions are not taken. In some instances, the operator must be reasonably skilled to avoid being burned.
In addition, it always is desirable to minimize waste or scrap. In nut roasting/glazing, scrap are pieces of sugar that have binded together to form a ball, sometimes called a sugar ball. Sugar balls are very hard and could break a tooth if bitten. As a result, sugar balls within a batch of roasted/glazed nuts should be discarded, which increases time and expense. Sugar balls vary in size, but generally have a size (width) of between 2.0 mm (about 0.079 inches) and 2.5 cm (about 0.98 inches), but sometimes are even bigger.
Still further, to clean the cooking bowl, water typically is added to the bowl and then heated to melt and dissolve all of the remaining sugar. Then, the now-heated water, along with the dissolved sugar, is poured out. While effective to clean the bowl, removing the water with the dissolved sugar (called herein, for convenience, “sugar water”) may be cumbersome.
Additionally, in the glazing and/or cleaning processes of certain machines, a relatively substantial amount of sugar water is converted into steam that escapes into the air, which disadvantageously causes surrounding surfaces to be coated with sugar.